The Medicated Child

Has anyone seen the Frontline show about psychiatric drugs and children?

Here is the link where you can watch it online, so I don't have to try to go about explaining it.

This was a show that I hold near and dear to my heart. It was also quite triggering for me.

My story:

I was diagnosed with depression as a child, even with attentive, incredible parents, an excellent school, and all sorts of opportunities to learn and grow.

I'm 16 now. I've been in talk therapy on and off for a total of... Well, as long as I can remember. Sometime between 3rd and 5th grade my parents and therapist decided it may help to take Prozac. Prozac helped me through a very rough time. I was hitting puberty (early), dealing with nasty peers at school, and trying to find myself spiritually.

However, at this point I regret having taken those pills. I believe that even though they were intended as a bridge, not a life path, that my brain could've learned to function quite well had it been given time and simple behavioral therapy.
I quit taking the drugs when I felt more content.

I started to feel depressed again in 8th grade. We played around with Prozac for a while, but it gave me headaches, so we switched to Zoloft in 9th grade. Zoloft sent me into deep, existential depression that kept me from functioning well, if at all. I missed a month of school, much to my parents' distress.

We finally figured out that Zoloft was a bad idea, at which point my psychiatrist wanted to try Effexor. I read all the labels and information and decided I didn't want to risk everything like I had with Zoloft. At that point I was completely rid of any psychiatric drugs.

It wasn't long before the depression came again, but more (of what I thought at the time,) sparatic. I noticed that I was depressed and throwing tantrums once a month, and understood that while I probably didn't have depression, I most certainly could connect it to severe PMS, called PMDD. PMDD is most common in older women, because PMS symptoms usually get worse with age. Six months ago, I was put on low-dose birth control to help, and since then any and all depression symptoms have been eliminated.

My opinion:

I believe being medicated as a child and later as a girl going through puberty stunted my brain's healthy growth. I hold the drugs at least partially responsible for my PMDD condition.

Children's brains are still developing, through puberty even. I think at such an age, behavioral therapy and above all, good parenting, is a much safer, effective method of curing children of "mental illnesses." While I'm sure certain problems exist for kids (I know depression exists-- to this day I can't describe what I felt at the age of six, but I think I tried to tell my therapist "like there was a little girl crying inside my head"), I seriously doubt that bipolar CAN even exist in children.

You can take any child and compare their behavior to that of a bipolar adult. Children naturally have wild mood swings and lack impulse control. Kids are not small adults. In fact, the way I see it, bipolar in adults in some cases can be compared to childlike behavior. That's where parenting comes in. Kids' brains are so impressionable that guidance is all that can save them from a future diagnosis of bipolar or ADD.

How can kids who grow up on heavy drugs like lithium, antipsychotics, and sedatives develop normal brain chemical patterns? Who knows if a child would grow out of mood disorders if the brain was given time to correct itself, with help from parents or therapists? And why in the world would doctors discourage behavior or talk therapy, even in conjunction with drugs?

So this is the end of my rant and my very passionate opinion. I thought I might share this with you, though I can tell it's a dangerous topic since I do feel so strongly about it.
So sorry if I offended or triggered anyone, and I'd love to hear others' opinions.

I saw that program a few months ago. I'm not anti-medication but I am VERY wary of pushing drugs on young children for the same reasons you listed. Children's brains are have more plasticity than adult brains, so occupational therapy, behavioral therapy, counseling, etc could possibly alter their brain functioning in a much safer and more natural way.

What really disturbed me was the way some of these doctors pushed drugs without considering options first. They profiled a young boy diagnosed with bipolar. They showed him and his mother during one of his doctor visits his mother said something like, "He (forgot the child's name) throws temper tantrums before we take him to school but once he gets there he's fine." So the psychiatrist decides to add Xanax to his daily medication regimen! WTF! Then the mother asked, "Is there ANYTHING ELSE I can do? Like taking a class? Anything?" And the psychiatrist immediately said, "No, I think at this point it's 98 percent biological!" He didn't even bother to try any therapies!

They also profiled another girl who was diagnosed with bipolar at age four who is now 13 years old. During one of her doctor visits her mother reported she had been acting depressed so the doctor decided to increase her medication which was ridiculous. First of all, she's a TEENAGER! What teenager DOESN'T act emotional or moody? Most importantly, her father had recently been sent to IRAQ! The poor kid probably missed her father and was worried about his safety. Of course she's not going to be cheery under those circumstances. They could have tried counseling to help her deal with her dad and other problems in her life.

I think medications should be used as a last resort. Medications can be lifesavers for people who actually have chemical imbalances but I'm very worried that doctors and consumers are using them to numb emotions instead of allowing children to experience these natural emotions and learn from them as they grow up. They're not learning to deal with their emotions if you just give them a pill. In the rare case when a child truly needs medications, the pills should be prescribed IN CONJUNCTION WITH OTHER THERAPIES as well. Medication should be used as a tool to help a person deal with his/her life, not as a way to suppress the symptoms.

i watched that last night. its ridiculous how much medciation those kids are on. i know they can really help, but you have to draw a line on how much to medicate a developing mind. that little boy was on waaaaay too many and his doctor just wanted to keep adding even after his mom asked about other options....DUH! a counselor could help!

it annoys me.

Sounds hard, I empathize with you....that your illness started pretty early....It's hard for me imagine finding things to be depressed about at that age, but it is an awkward age.....very awkward.....

I do know danielle steel's son wasn't given meds for a long time to prevent the developmental dangers...yet when they finally did....it was SUCH a blessing.....it was his only hope......there, answered.....

The book is good .and Danielle Steel and I correspond, when I wrote her about how touched I was by the book.....

http://www.amazon.com/His-Bright-Lig...863&sr=8-1

i too have read His Bright Light, many times actually. while it was frustrating that Nick was suffering as a child, it was wise not to medicate him so early on. But, as a mother she seemed to do everything possible to help him. The story of Nick Traina is touching.

@embarrassed & HALLIEBETH87 - I thought the same thing about how the one doctor claimed that the child's needs were all medical, even though the parents were all for other forms of therapy. Too many psychiatrists, not enough psychologists.

They even said there were some symptoms (like saying things over and over) that medication didn't fix. There's your sign that his issues are cognitive, and not chemical!

And the bipolar girl... When she was four, certainly she wasn't "normal," but the footage of her parents just sitting there, completely defeated... You could TELL what kind of parents they were. And when her mother said she'd have to be medicated for the rest of her life, that even if the child couldn't feel it, the mother felt it for her... It broke my heart.

Four-year-olds are by nature very grandiose in their thoughts, but it takes such little effort to repeatedly tell them right from wrong, fact from fiction. The notion that she wanted to sit and watch TV all day might account for the "busting heads open" talk. It's the only way a child that young would learn such behavior.

@Junerain - I recently contemplated that I may have had developmental issues. My parents say I was an odd child. I didn't really like to cuddle, I loved to read, and I could read Dr. Seuss' "The Sneetches" by myself at the age of four. I didn't have a good grasp of social concepts until middle school (though now I'm pretty much the master of adolescent social psychology), and I had coordination issues through 3rd grade (now I have some of the best reflexes of kids my age, even if my hand-eye is still sub-par). I have a feeling that if my parents hadn't been as amazing as they were, and if I developed behavior problems because of that, I might have been diagnosed autistic or otherwise abnormal.

I thank my parents for giving me opportunities instead of medications. There is another Frontline program about kids with ADHD, and one parent said things worked best when they just kept their son busy. He learned fluent French and studied piano. I'm upset that so few parents are doing constructive things for children that may or may not need more attention than others. Instead of encouraging school attendance, parents turn to sedatives...

Ooh, it makes me so angry!